The Green Monster

For you non-Red Sox fans out there: This is Wally, the Red Sox’s team mascot. He is seen here leaning over a huge replica of the left-field wall at Fenway Park, a.k.a. The Green Monster. Get it? Wally the Green Monster?

The dude in Wally’s glove is a full-size mannequin dressed as a member of the New York Yankees. They aren’t a very popular team up here. (Though we do love them for their history-making performance in the 2004 ALCS, when they executed the Worst Postseason Collapse In Major-League Baseball History. Greatest vicarious experience of my entire life. I still get goosebumps when I think about it.)

So, anyhoo, this huge Wally and the wall over which he leans (which is made of thousands upon thousands of green jelly beans, by the way) are located at a humongous furniture store—which is actually more like an amusement park disguised as a furniture store. (If you go here and click on “Enter Store,” and then click on “Bridge,” you’ll see what I’m talking about.)

When I was a teenager, I would hear radio advertisements for this furniture store, in which the owners would tout the fact that they kept the store open late on Friday and Saturday nights, and further boasted that it was a great place to spend a night out … and I would think to myself, “What kind of misguided buffoon would want to hang out at a furniture store on a Friday or Saturday night?”

And then I grew up and had kids and discovered that I am that kind of buffoon … because this furniture store? Great friggin’ place to spend a Friday or Saturday night!

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